


Overcooked

by katsumeragi



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Chefs, Alternate Universe - Restaurant, Implied Fareeha "Pharah" Amari/Angela "Mercy" Ziegler, Implied Relationships, Implied Widowmaker | Amelie Lacroix/Lena "Tracer" Oxton, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, Slow Burn, hanzo pov, kat's thinly veiled excuse to have Hanzo make sushi and Jesse be a bumbling executive chef, kat's thinly veiled excuse to have Morrison be as much of a nuisance as Bobby Flay, kat's thinly veiled excuse to have Reinhardt have a beer company but still be a giant, kat's thinly veiled excuse to have Reyes run a taqueria
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-01 06:01:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8611942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katsumeragi/pseuds/katsumeragi
Summary: Hanzo Shimada needs an escape from the world of sushi and the world of his past. He lands a job at the critically-acclaimed restaurant Gibraltar with an insane menu, insane cooks, and an insanely attractive head chef. [McHanzo, with lots of restaurant industry antics]





	1. Lowered Expecations and Curry

Hanzo was relieved he saved as much money as he did before coming to America, because nine hundred dollars to rent a room was  _ extortion _ and if he wasn't so desperate for a room he'd throw a pairing knife through this landlord’s skull so forcefully it would chiffonade his brain cells. 

The room was decently sized, maybe even the size of a studio apartment, with a bed, dresser, desk, and lamp. Hanzo threw his two suitcases and the Halliburton case carrying his knives onto the full-sized bed and began to unpack. Crisp white chef coats neatly hung on hangers while everything else had a specific home neatly folded in the drawers. His laptop was placed on the desk, along with a small incense holder. Two chopsticks, light wood with green tips were placed in the small divet.

Hanzo moved his cases and sat on the bed with an grating screech of the rusted frame, surveying his blank slate of a new life. Getting his work visa was the easy part, but moving to the United States to learn a little more and hone his skills at his age was almost suicide. Changing his career in his twenties and relocating with little prestige alone was bad enough, but over years he grew restless, overworked, the hair at his sides grew in salt and pepper. He needed a break from sushi and a chance to expand his horizons, which is where Gibraltar, the hottest new restaurant in town with the strangest name came into his life. A critic darling, dinner service only,  _ a Michelin star _ within its first eight months of being open. He was working the fish station in less than twenty four hours and with each passing second he felt that usual sense of dread turning his stomach and muddling his thoughts. 

He forced himself up to find his towel for a quick shower. Before leaving he glanced at the chopstick incense, hesitating, hoping he could just get one win. 

* * *

 

Hanzo woke four hours early for his 1 p.m. shift to be Hanzo’s usual level of neurotically prepared. He went on a morning run, took another shower, steamed his coat and pants, shined his non-slip shoes and tied his hair back with his gold ribbon six times before being assured no stray strands would fall free. He packed a light blue knife roll for the day, three pieces of cutlery in total with tweezers and a fish spatula. He left has apartment an hour early to navigate public transit but arrived in twenty minutes. He would walk from now on, he thought. He stopped in a cafe for green tea but only shaved fifteen more minutes.

Hanzo stood in front of the restaurant’s main entrance and tried to get a feel of where this day would take him. It was an oddly humble space beneath a few floors of old apartments, the wood exterior the same dodger blue as the windows and the fire escapes. Simple silver letters spelled Gibraltar on the front with small overhanging black lanterns. The dining room was a blend of classic European with modern fixtures, from the upholstered wooden chairs to the metallic fractal light structures that hung on the ceiling like clouds with constant silver linings. The kitchen wasn’t visible from the dining hall, a huge relief for him. Cooking in front of crowds shook his concentration, but that was sworn to secrecy.

“She’s pretty, ain’t she?”

Hanzo turned to his left to see a taller man with a shaggy haircut smoking a cigarette, reflecting on the same building he was. He must have been so focused to the point he was easy to ambush. This man beside him dressed casually, with a baggy jacket and black slacks and the facial hair of a wild animal. His wide-brimmed hat gave him an air of mystery, like a vigilante in an old western movie. 

“It is a very nice looking building in general, yes,” he replied with little eye contact. God was this man enticing, Hanzo thought.

“That paintin’ at the bars always been my favorite part. The owner found it at one of the flea markets downtown, funny enough.”

“All of it is gorgeous. It is humbling to finally see it in person.”

The man set his sights on him. He had twenty minutes before work and felt like he needed three cold showers before he even began. “Damn, look at you. Like some kinda TV star. Where d’you work? One of those hotels up in the hills? Somewhere in wine country?”

Was Hanzo blushing? How ridiculous, he thought. There was something alluring about this man though, with his height, his mess, his smoky voice that belonged in a forgotten wild west. “No need to flatter me. I actually start here today.”

The man’s face turns crimson. Wide-eyed, face turned away, he muttered “Why didn’t I make that connection?” 

“Um, is something wrong?”

“Sorta. Maybe. You’re here pretty damn early, aren’t ya, Hanzo?”

No.

Wait.

The stranger extended a friendly yet flustered hand to shake. Hanzo was too dumbfounded to reach back. “I'm Jesse McCree, the fella you spoke to in the emails?”

He wanted to run. He wanted to go home and pack his small suitcases and fly back to Japan. His legs felt cemented to the ground in disbelief at how this introduction had begun. Still in his out-of-body experience, he shook his hand cautiously.

“It is...good to meet you” Hanzo eventually said in a handshake that felt like hours. 

It was all in his imagination, Hanzo thought. How could he have guessed this brazen wrangler caricature of a man was going to be his new boss? The high he was on from starting his life over dissipated into annoyance, if anything.

“Right, where the hell are my manners? Let's get you ready inside.” He motioned for him to follow around the back of the building to a side door in the alley nearby.

“What did you mean about ‘looking like a television star?’” Hanzo asked.

The man’s eyes ran up and down his body, making him feel naked more than scrutinized. He laughed heartily at Hanzo’s caution. “Well if I didn’t know any better from the way you’re dressed I’d say you were lookin’ to interview for my own job!”

Hanzo looked down at his immaculate uniform. “Is this not standard for attire?”

“Darlin’, we’re not cookin’ at The French Laundry. We’re just makin’ nice food for good people. Come on, let’s get you a little more comfortable.” The chef opened the back door and motioned for Hanzo to walk in first. His phrasing made Hanzo’s skin crawl.

Inside they were met with a narrow hallway, a thin row of lockers and a coat rack on the left and a closed door to the right. “This here’s our little chagin’ area, you’re gonna be locker number five I think. We got dishwasher shirts on the rack, I reckon you look like a medium as well.” Hanzo took the fabric of the white button-ups between two of his fingers and was surprised at how thin and simple they were, especially the snap buttons in the front.

“You wear these as well?”

“Well I mean, I got a few coats in the office, pretty blue ones with gold writin’ on them, but it really ain’t my style. Those are for charity events and such where I have to show my face and act civilized.” McCree went inside the right door and threw his backpack in an office that was half tidy, half decimated. Hanzo’s instincts had a feeling which half was the chef’s. He pulled one of the shirts off a hanger, even if it wasn’t his preference. He hesitated, worried about the tattoo that canvases his entire left arm. He sighed and took off his coat, wearing a grey tank underneath. The dishwasher shirt left nothing to the imagination and only heightened his discomfort around McCree. 

“Hot damn, that is some good ink. Takes a lot of patience to sit in a chair for that long,” McCree said while standing in the doorway in a plain (yet very stained) white tee shirt. The complement was conflicting, but at least he didn’t know what it really stood for. He tossed Hanzo a small stack of blue aprons. “You get three aprons, but you gotta wash ‘em yourself, okay?”

“How much will I owe you?”

“Huh? They’re free.” He was astonished at the generosity. 

“What about a cap? Shall I provide my own?”

“You don't need one, as long as you keep it tight. Hell I think all of us have pretty long hair but you just gotta be smart about it.” Hanzo had never worked on a restaurant with such a cavalier attitude about uniforms. To most it was liberating but to him it felt like topping fine sushi with ketchup. In time he could unlearn the strict code of Japanese hospitality but for now, he worried.

Once they were both dressed McCree led him to the back of the kitchen, crammed with equipment and shelves. A walk-in refrigerator door and a pantry for dry goods were further in the back of the dimly-lit area while a long metal table in the center. Every empty space was filled with every piece of equipment from a small range, vacuum sealing machine, special stock cauldrons, and an ice cream machine. He could barely see the cream colored walls behind the shelves of spices, all perfectly labeled and stacked.

A short, peppy woman with disheveled copper hair was running back and forth between furiously shredding squash into thin circlets on a mandolin and stirring one of the stock cauldrons. The air smelled of beef stock and pumpkin. McCree whistled and she looked up from her work. “Hey chef!”

“Howdy! Hanzo, this is our garde manger and prep whiz Lena, Lena, Hanzo, new fish guy.”

“Hi there love!” She reached out her hand but quickly withdrew it, seeing all the moisture on her gloves. “Sorry, got a lot to do today. Busy busy as always!”

McCree slouched and leaned close to Hanzo’s ear. His proximity made him uneasy. “‘Might seem like a bit of a space cadet at first but she’s a damn firecracker. The day she runs out of steam is gonna be the death of me.”

“Oy! Chef! Don’ forget to leave the gas marks on tonight! I need to dry out those courgettes for the garnish!”

“Ah for the love of, gas marks? Like the oven?”

“Yeah!”

“See, the only problem is she still talks like she’s livin’ in London. Half the time I just kinda smile and nod to what she says. I don’t have the damndest idea what a courgi is either.”

“I believe a courgette is a zucchini in American,” Hanzo said.

“Now I’m jus’ gonna make you her translator. C’mon, we’ll go check out the main line.” 

The main kitchen was cozier than he expected; the walkway between the metal cutting board island and the row of burners and flat top grills was narrow as one person. Two paths were offshoots to the main kitchen, one a mystery and enough running water from the other to assume it was the dishwasher pit. The opposite wall to the cooking stations were shelves lined with dishes of every shape and color and cubbies of napkins. On the bottom shelf he eyed a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of red wine, both half empty. There must have been a lot of “special occasions.”

“Ooh wow, is Man Bun my shadow today?” asked a slender Asian girl with her hair held back with a thick gray and pink headband. She was nursing a pot of risotto on the stove while blowing bubblegum. Her face indicated that she might rather be anywhere else. 

“Damn it Hana, I said no gum on the line! Spit it out!” McCree said while pinching the bridge of his nose. She pulled a trash bin from underneath her station and spat it out while giving her boss a spiteful glare. Did this chef have any control over his crew? “Pardon that,”  the chef said to him, “Hana, this is Hanzo, Hanzo, Hana, he's gonna watch over you for a few days til he gets a feel of the station. I'm just givin’ him a tour.”

“Cool. Finally we get some help around here.” She extended her left hand across her body to shake his hand, which he returned. She was insanely young, he thought. Barely out of high school compared to someone like him. 

“If I come back and you have gum in your mouth again nobody's helpin’ you with family meal!” McCree said while making the “I'm watching you” motion with his fingers. 

“Yes Chef,” she groaned. 

McCree motioned him to follow around a corner. He hated it, being paraded around for these terse greetings, but it was necessary. On the other side was a small station with its own convection oven and stand mixer, and a very messy countertop. A man (definitely a young man, Hanzo thinks as he laments not getting into this industry as early as his new coworkers) with dreadlocks and praline skin has covered every surface with flour and is humming without a care in the world, pressing little rhythms into a ball of dough. McCree knocked on the wall to snap him out of his song.

“Lúcio! I want you to meet Hanzo here, gonna be our new fish cook. Lúcio here is our pastry chef. Takes care of the sweets and breads. He’s a good kid.”

Lúcio energetically grabbed Hanzo’s hand and shook it himself, leaving small tracks of flour like snow on his hand. “Yo!  _ Hajimemashite _ ! Glad to have you with us man!”

“You speak Japanese?” Hanzo asked with surprise. 

“Nah, not really. Used to date this Brazilian-Japanese girl though,  _ mmph _ ! You’re not allergic to gluten, are you?”

“I am not, but why is that important?”

“Good, good, because that would probably make you a liar, that’s why.” His expression grew oddly serious but he pulled back with a cheshire smile. “See, back when I was working in a hospital, we had people come in saying they were all ‘Oh man, I’m gonna die, I ate a piece of cake’ and we were like ‘Lady, you probably just ate too much cake.’” His hand pulled from the sticky dough again and formed a fist. Hanzo correctly guessed he had to bump it. “Hey, once you’re settled in, let me pick your brain about some Japanese desserts.”

“Hey, what’re you workin’ on?” McCree asked.

“Oh, this? This is bread for family meal! It’s got black pepper and nice cheese in it!”

“Which nice cheese?” McCree took a moment to smell the dough. He shot a suspicious glance at the baker. “Lúcio. Which cheese?”

“The gouda?”

“You mean the gouda that goes with the brussels?” 

The young man had an incriminating, uneasy smirk. “Okay, look, I know this looks bad, but I didn’t think about it til after I used some. And I didn’t use all of it?”

McCree put his hands across his face and groaned into them. “I ain’t even sure why I come into work somedays. Kid, you need to study menus besides your own, okay?” Lúcio gave a half-hearted salute. Hanzo was staggered by the lack of a real punishment, thinking back on a night another cook used extra  _ tobiko _ and was unemployed before the night ended. That wasn’t the strangest part to him though.

“He used to work in a hospital?”

“Yep, was gonna be an RN, think that’s just fancy talk for a nurse, but wasn’t feelin’ it. It’s not too crazy to see a huge career change in kitchens.” That restored a little of Hanzo’s faith that America could still be the place for new beginnings.

“Aside from a few confectioners, it is a rare sight to see so many women in a kitchen.”

“Yeah well, this city is a pretty diverse place. Just don’t go sayin’ that in front of Fareeha because, damn, that girl’s got a helluva right hook.”

“Your cook... _ punched _ you?”

“It was after hours. I don’t remember why she did, but I probably deserved it. Oh, hey, speak of the devil!” 

A small woman with grey hair in a thick braid entered the kitchen, sharply dressed with a head scarf the same color as the restaurant’s facade and an armful of paperwork. Chef McCree rushed to her aid as a folder was slipping from her grasp.

“Oh Jesse, what must you think of me if you think I’d let any of this hit the ground? Is my age finally starting to show?” she chided.

“I jus’ can’t let go of that good ol’ southern hospitality sometimes, you know me! Hey, I want you to meet the new fish cook, Hanzo. You got his paperwork ready?”

She extended one of her thin arms out to Hanzo to shake. “Hello dearie, good to finally have you. We’ll take a few minutes before dinner to fill out papers, okay? By the way, Jesse, no Fareeha today.”

“What?! You didn’t even call me ‘bout it?”

“She said most of her prep was finished yesterday. My girl is having migraines and needs time to recuperate. Plus you brag about being so fast on your feet, so get in there,” Ana said slyly, waving her fingers and slipping back through the kitchen to the office. 

“Hell,” McCree said, combing a hand through his hair, “Alright, guess you’ll meet her tomorrow. At least it’s only Wednesday, huh.”

“My girl?”

“Fareeha’s Ana’s daughter,” he said. “She works meat and grill, but that’s gonna end someday soon when she feels like she can be a manager and her ma can retire.”

“So that means tonight, you will be working half of the line?”

“Don't forget expeditin’,” McCree said with a wink. “You’re gettin’ the full show tonight. For better or worse.”

* * *

 

Hanzo had found a nice rhythm in the chaos that was before service prep work in the small snippets he made cutting herbs from little plastic beds. He dipped them in ice water and lightly blotted them, the cool water a blessing from the high heat Hana was using behind him. He had never seen basil so small the leaves were as large as his fingernails, or sorrel with red veins as this a thread. He moved onto the last small pallet of greens. The tag read “Bull’s Blood.” His brother would have loved the name; he would have said it inspired strong will, maybe a good heart.

“So what part of Japan are you from?” Hana asked him, breaking up the morose thought.

“Hanamura. A few miles outside of Tokyo.”

“Ooh, nice! I’m from Seoul but I moved here when I was really little. There's so little good Korean food here too! You have to take the train to Oakland if you want  _ gukhwappang _ so usually I just settle for those little Japanese fish cakes, what are they called?”

“ _ Taiyaki _ ?”

“Yes! It's just not the same though!” She reached a small metal net into her pot and pulled thin crispy chips from the oil. She rested them on a lined pan next to Hanzo's work. “These are cassava chips, by the way. Goes with the black cod dish. Don't worry though because it's your first day.” Hanzo so took the time to pause and write the detail down in his notebook. “What do you do when you’re not cooking?”   
“Honestly, I never had time to keep up with another skill or hobby in Japan.”

“Ugh, I totally know how that feels sometimes! I play a lot of video games when I’m not here, which is like, four hours before I have to force myself to sleep. Sometimes I wish I could just combine my work and my fun, you know? Like all those cool theme cafes in Japan! I could be the first out here! Think about the little Protoss salads, or Zerg burgers!” She tapped on his shoulder and he turned to see Hana with an expression as if she discovered gold. “Zergers!”

He half smiles and turns back to his work. These pleasantries and conversations would take more than a few hours to adjust to. The excitement in her eyes reminded him of his brother when he spoke of the aspirations he once had. 

He found himself cutting the stems to the beat of the small cellphone speakers in the pass, snips to every thump of bass. He chided himself; he was too old for that relaxed behavior. It was electronic, but very ethereal and calming music. Genji would say it's “music for people who wished they were as cool as he was.”

“Hey, Hanzo!”

He looked to McCree, whose existence he completely forgot in the flow of the music. He was cutting a rack of lamb, smothered in aromatics to the point there was more herb visible than flash, slicing between each rib with the force of a snapping bear trap. His knife piqued his interest with a light wooden handle and smooth waves in the blade, looking natural enough to be embedded in a tree, perfect for such a rugged cowboy of a man in this glass city.

“We’re gonna start eatin’ soon so I think you should grab Ana for your paperwork. You at a good stoppin’ point?”

Hanzo sat at the restaurant’s bar, blue with a marbled top, to the left of the dining room, the bottles of liquor arranged around a quaint painting of Gibraltar itself like candles at an altar. The paperwork was tedious but simple. He had the copy of his work visa, his passport, his insurance from Japan that will shield him for most of his initial stay. He struggled to remember his address (985 Pierce Street, by parks and expensive breakfast cafes) but after the sixth form he wrote it on it was engraved in his memory. Fifteen dollars an hour to begin. Sundays and Mondays off every week. No, he was not a citizen. No, he was not from Mexico. Yes, he received his employee handbook. By the last form he felt like with each signature he was signing away a bit of his soul. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't, he thought, although the restaurant’s matriarch was awfully pleasant with the instructions.

A menu slid into his line of vision under a hand with dirt-caked fingernails. “What’s you be havin’?” McCree asked in jest. Hanzo raised an eyebrow and the chef sighed. “I guess all my jokes can't be winners. We got some last minute touches to do, so why don't you take a few minutes to look over the menu and start thinkin’ about anythin’ to ask Hana?” 

God, it wasn't a cultural barrier, but Hanzo couldn't fathom the flavor combinations on the menu. Trout with nettles and hedgehog mushrooms, fried anchovies with latkes, chocolate with persimmons and chestnuts, none of this was food he'd ever encountered, even when he was a man who could afford to. He felt so small in his capabilities, and that inescapable worry that he was merely a fish cutter and nothing else made him crumple the edges of the menu and just want to  _ run _ .

The clack of glassware set before him as McCree lowered a wide bowl in front of him. There was Lúcio’s cheese bread and a generous portion of beef and vegetables doused in a thick Japanese curry. “We thought you'd feel more welcome with somethin’ like this to start service,” the chef said with his welcoming voice that sounded the way whiskey felt. 

“You start every dinner service with meals like this?” Hanzo asked in astonishment.

“Most places in the States do. If everyone ain't fuller than a rattlesnake eatin’ a deer they'll slow down or burn themselves. Care to join us?” 

“I would like more time to read this menu, if that is alright. Thank you for the meal.”

“‘Course, just remember, fifty minutes til showtime!”

He stuffed the menu into his notebook and sopped the curry up with his bread. He grumbled and swore to himself he'd never mention it was better than most he had in Japan.

* * *

 

“We got fifty-four on the books, but don't settle down ‘cause of that,” McCree said, pulling a long ticket from the machine in front of him. All the chefs were in their respective stations and focused on the night ahead. Hanzo stood between Lena and Hana, hands behind his back and eager to watch how the kitchen truly worked. “Alright, first one in. Two beet salads, one brussels, followed by trout, abalone, followed by lamb, sausage.”

“Two beets!” Lena cheerily repeated.

“Crab, abalone!” Hana said, coquetting the side of her cheek. 

“Hana!”

“Damn it!” she said, spitting out another small pink wad of gum. Hanzo looked to Lena’s direction as she delicately arranged little roasted beets with tufts of greens and crumbles of cheese and nuts. She hummed a slow melody but her hands worked as fast as her feet did earlier. It didn’t seem like a complicated dish compared to most, but to Hanzo anything was impressive. 

“Hey, Man Bun,” Hana said, reveling in the new nickname that christened him, “wanna help me out a little?” Still confused by the lack of a bun on his head, he nodded yes. “Grab one of those tiny bowls in the fridge and the pan of abalone next to it.”

He turned to the cutting board and bent down to the tiny fridge unit underneath. He pulled out a small black ramekin with milky custard and a tray of the shellfish, beautifully fabricated and neatly arranged into peach-colored waves. “Okay, so, take four of the abalone pieces, a few scoops of the yellow jelly, and some of that basil. Make it look pretty and natural. Then take one of the abalone shells and fill it with some of those watermelon radishes.” It was a lot of instruction to take in at once, but her little pans filled with ingredients were organized by dish. She must have cared a lot more than she let on, he assumed. He took a pair of tweezers out of his pocket and began placing the abalone on. North, south, east, west, in terms of positioning? No, he was overthinking it. He scattered them in an offset compass, and placed the gelee and herb on just as arbitrarily. Hana peered over his shoulder and made a pleased hum. “Not bad! I mean, like, that dish is probably close to stuff you had at home, but you have a good eye!”

A loud sputtering sound drew his attention, and he turned to see McCree, hunched over a plate of beef with tweezers that seemed like dollhouse furniture in his massive hands. There was a glint of concentration in his eyes as the shrill sounds of the ticket machine broke the pattern of sizzling fire and metal pans. Yet he called the ticket out, followed by a repeated chorus of dishes, and continued to finish his dish with the command of a surgeon. Every call, every movement, every flip of a sautee pan was a walk in the park to this man. Every meticulously placed garnish was immaculate second nature. This chef that stood before him, barbaric and carefree, completely transformed himself once guests came in. 

Hanzo was certain he hated this man, but that could have been that initial moment of attraction talking, and he was determined to erase every iota of that feeling from his system. But there were conflicting under and overwhelming feelings for this man he could only describe as a simpleton, who was such a stark contrast to the men he'd trained under his career thus far. Laidback, unkempt, frustratingly friendly, the polar opposite of what a Michelin chef was in his mind. Yet he controlled the line with perfection, and  _ damn _ , he could cook. It was almost unfair that this savant could trounce over all the high standards bore into him while being effortlessly better. He knew he could improve quickly, just as easily. Hanzo felt this job was almost too coddling on someone like him, or was it that he was used to everything being so damned difficult?

He placed the abalone dish in the pass of the line, his left eye twitching as his mind raced for ways to survive the night.

* * *

 

Hanzo spent the rest of the night helping Hana with small garnishes and being a bystander to the controlled chaos in the restaurant. He watched servers and bussers whose names he’d learn in time shuffle plates back and forth the double doors to the dining room. Small dishes with bread and butter and bowls of bright fruit segments and swirls of chocolate left Lúcio’s corner. They had such elegance, so much patience that only someone with bedside manner could manage, he thought. He tried to take as many notes as possible, little sketches, the order of components on a plate, names he heard shouted over the disarray of the line and the happy chatter of guests when the doors swung open each time. His handwriting was woven with his nerves; he wouldn’t be able to decipher his notes by the next morning.

Before 9:00 pm the last ticket had been received. Chef McCree urged him to leave for the night. “It’s your first night, maybe you’re jet-lagged, don’t worry that lil’ head of yours ‘bout it! Get some good rest!” McCree said with a Goofy smile and a pat on Hanzo’s shoulder that had the smaller man seething. “You did damn fine for your first day!”

Hanzo stood in front of his locker, lost in thought, balling up the dishwasher shirt in his hand before pressing it into the overflowing hamper nearby. No, he was merely an observer today out of necessity, not to be patronizing. Hanzo doubted McCree even had the capacity to be condescending, or anything outside of the naive, disorderly view he had of his kitchen. 

He wavered on why he was so harsh to this chef in his head, and decided that he couldn’t see how a man with half his intellect could have everything he wanted in life.

(It was certainly not how the air in his lungs seemed to vanish when he watched him cook.)

He thought about what his brother would say at a time like this.

_ “What does it matter if you are the best if you can’t be happy about it?” _

He was frustrated enough without listening to the lectures of a dead man in his head. He slammed his locker shut and headed home in the cold autumn night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Hi readers! Thank you for making it through the first chapter! This is sort of a crazy passion project of a fic for me, seeing as I both really like McHanzo and I work in fine dining. Any behavior, layouts, menu items, and things like that are very based in reality and if something seems unclear or if I use unfamiliar lingo please shoot me a message and I can try to fix that ._.”  
> -On the flipside, if you have any questions about the restaurant world in general, I love talking about it so please do ask :)  
> -Even more, speaking of, so far most of the dishes I've described are based off of past courses at Manresa, Lazy Bear, and The Progress. Go look at some pics! I've been to one and staged at one, it's really beautiful looking food!  
> -Everyone is the current age in this fic.  
> -I guess I’m setting this in the Bay Area just because I live here and I don’t feel like bullshitting details about Hollywood or Route 66 to make a more fleshed out world? I feel it’s a little better to base it in a reality I can describe more vividly for future chapters.  
> -The song I’m picturing him cutting herbs to is “Aftermath” by Caravan Palace. There’s going to be a lot of music tie-ins and if there is enough I think I’ll make an 8tracks playlist for it.  
> -Gukhwappang are chrysanthemum-shaped cakes that are a Korean street food. They usually are filled with red bean but can have other stuff in them too, like taiyaki. Hell my favorite taiyaki have chocolate and banana in them, not very authentic :V  
> -I actually have a small doodle of the layout of the restaurant because it helped me to figure out movements of characters and locations: http://imgur.com/a/MIC6i  
> -Comments and critiques are always welcome! I’m hoping this wasn’t a slugfest of a first chapter since it needed a lot of exposition. It’ll be lessened in the second since it should only be Pharah and the…dishwashers that need some description. Also come talk to me on tumblr, steam,or battlenet if you’d like!


	2. Cuts and Crab

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hanzo gets introduced to a scary woman, odd dishwashers, instagram, and creative liberties in a two week span.

Hanzo’s second day, he decided, was just as jarring as the first, as he used his thin slicing knife to help Hana fabricate abalone from the shell, yet the presence of Fareeha Amari next to him felt like the black cloud of a spirit.

She was intense, like a hunting falcon. She was taller than him but shorter than McCree, her raven hair tied into a perfect top knot and a face meticulously painted on. Below her right eye was a thick black curl. _The Eye of Horus_. Hanzo was too intimidated to ask if it was permanent.

“It’s real.”

“Huh?”

“You were staring at my eye, right? It’s a real tattoo,” Fareeha said while hammering her cleaver into the thigh of a chicken. “My mother used to paint one on with eyeliner when she was a cook, since my grandparents might have disowned her back in the day. I thought it would be a good way to honor her.” Her features softened, the corner of her lips curling into a small smile. To him it still felt like the smile a jackal would make after a successful takedown of its prey.  “Is yours familial as well?”

Hanzo paused between gentle cuts into the fresh abalone. “Yes, in a sense.” He released the soft flesh from the shell and placed it on a small tray to his right. He liked butchering abalone more than most shellfish, he remembered, not having done out for a while. The underside, with its beautiful oil spill sheen, was something Genji used to chatter about when he washed dishes at two in the morning. _It's kind of messed up that you have to remove the insides til you get to the beautiful part of it, yeah? Do you think it's symbolic, brother?_

“Make sure you bring those to the dishwashers right away, or else they will complain later on,” Fareeha said while glancing at the leftover shells.

“Thank you,” he said, figuring h should get them out of the way sooner rather than later. She seemed so sharp in everything she noticed, to the point he wondered why she wasn’t a sous chef.

He brought his shells to the dish room, and was surprised to see someone there already. The gangly figure in front of him was slouched over the sink, filling it with a cocktail of detergent and sanitizer, whistling something high-pitched and tapping his skeletal fingers against the sink’s rim. His hair was in mangled blond patches, his grin like a hyena’s; sharp, straight, insane. His uniform wasn’t as kempt as everyone else, with his button-up’s sleeves rolled to make a tank top and fading, tearing black denim as skinny as Hana’s pants. If he wasn’t so sure of how kitchen sinks worked, Hanzo would have guessed a homeless man wandered into the restaurant and needed to be escorted out before he found the bar.

“Oy! You must be the new bloke Chef Jesse’s been talking about!” With the same foreign enthusiasm as everyone else in the restaurant the lanky young man forcibly shook his hand, leaving a thin film of soap and grime behind. Hanzo did his best to look as visibly disgusted as possible. “‘Names Jamie, me and the big mate wash dishes. Need me to take those beauties?”

“Uh,” Hanzo felt his arm manhandled again as Jamie took the shells from him and threw them into the pristine three compartment sink. His limp was insanely distracting to him.

“You're alright, mate!” Jamie shouted over the washing machine running in the background. “Foppish, proper, but a good shake on ya!”

Behind him, Hanzo heard hushed snickering and turned to see McCree having his day made by the whole interaction. He hasn't realized his hands were still held out from the jarring filth on them.

“Is this funny to you?” Hanzo asked his boss while watching Jamie haphazardly treat his shells like skipping stones between sinks.

“G’day Jesse!” Jamie said cheerily.

“Howdy!” he replied. He looked back at Hanzo. “Good to see you ain’t keepin’ to yourself.”

“Not by choice, chef.”

“Oy, Jesse, you still fixing to buy Anzacs for Lú? I’d give me kanakas for a box of Wagon Wheels if you can get them!” McCree took a permanent marker and wrote it on his left hand. Hanzo had a feeling it would smudge within minutes. He also had a feeling _kanakas_ didn’t translate to _Islanders_ like it did in Japanese but didn’t want to find out today. “Hanzo, keep your hands out.”

Still exasperated, he kept them held out as he felt the ground shake a little, with a solid rhythm. Footsteps? A low grunt bellowed through the dishpit as a large man came around the corner from storage. He was boulder-sized, and if he found Fareeha’s sharp nature intimidating, this man was a spring tsunami in comparison. His white hair was tied back in a way similar to his own, with a face scarred and pudgy.

If this man ever had a hayday, he suspected it might have been while wearing a mask.

Hanzo contemplated whether his life was an ill-scripted comedy of errors as the dishwasher dug up the pristine abalone shells like a giant reaching into the ocean’s trenches and placed them his hands, Excess water dripped onto his shoes in buckets, and the man who was at least three of him disappeared to bus more dishes without a trace or small earthquakes in his wake.

“Who is that, again?” Hanzo asked, using his head to shakily point around the corner. McCree looked like he was enjoying every second of Hanzo’s confused expression and his socks getting soggy.

“Ah, that fella is Mister Rutledge. He don’t really talk a lot, but I'm guessin’ you found out Jamie'll talk your damn ear off!” Jamie, now with rubber gloved hands, gave a quick thumbs up while whistling his tone-deaf melody again.

“Yes, I have.”

“He’s a good kid, and Rutledge’s faster than a meltin’ snowcone in Hell with dishes. Even if they used to be criminals.”

“Criminals?” How could he so casually bring up that detail?

“They used to be in some biker gang in Australia, I reckon. I found ‘em roughin’ it outside Golden Gate Park and they seem pretty cleaned up now.” McCree adjusted the strings of his apron and  began to walk back to the office. “I take it crime ain't welcome in the kitchens in Japan?”

He gulped. It wasn't. And yet he and Genji did their best to survive.

“When possible, yes.”

 

* * *

 

“So, like, what’s your _thing_ ?” Hana asked while gingerly stirring bits of _maitake_ and cubes of pumpkin into her pot of rice. Hanzo didn’t turn to face her, deciding to keep add much of his concentration on the herb beds and blooming gelatin in front of him.

“I do not think I understand.”

“Like, Lúcio goes out on the weekends and sometimes rolls at clubs, and then calls me at two in the morning and won’t shut up, Chef Jesse goes through a few bottles of whiskey each weekend, so what about you?”

Guilty pleasures, he realized she meant. Those small escapes most chefs need to survive every service. He wanted to answer “Self-deprecation and enough liquor to purge all of my guilt” but that wasn't the most socially acceptable answer. “I do not think I have any vices like that. Maybe sake, once in awhile.”

“Okay, well, this one time,” Hana began while leaning into Hanzo's view, her hand still scraping the bottom of the rondo with a wooden spoon, “I did a secret cam show for my stream’s top donators so I could get some cosmetic items? I ended up having enough for every cosmetic item in the whole game, and enough for a month’s rent.”

His jaw dropped like a disappointed uncle's. “I...I am not sure how to feel about that.”

“Aw, I thought you’d find that funny. What, you don’t go cruising for dudes often?”

“Not esp...wait what?”

“You’re gay, right?” Was he? He knew he was attracted to men (but not the right ones, as seen by his idiotic cowboy chef) but he hadn't been close to anyone in years. “It doesn’t matter. This industry is like, _really_ gay.”

They cooked in silence for a few minutes. Hanzo didn't appreciate his carefully constructed persona being torn apart by a nineteen-year-old.

“Fareeha has a girlfriend, y’know? Last year at the Christmas party, Lena got really wasted at that gin bar, Whitechapel? And I guess she really hit it off with the doctor that was pumping her stomach.”

He scoffed. “That is far less romantic than you make it out to be, Hana.”

“She’s super nice though! Fareeha takes her in for dinner every time the menu changes. She brought Lúcio chocolates when she went back to Switzerland. I think Lena might be into girls too. She always stares at the hostess, I don't know why, she seems like a total ice queen.”

Hanzo pondered at the idea of anyone in his line of work having enough time to see each other. Maybe he was just more misanthropic than most.

“Chef Jesse is gay.” Hanzo paused. Was this a sick joke? Hana snickered at his jolt. “Oh, my god, did your ears just perk up?” she whispered.

“I am just surprised. He didn’t strike me as such.”

“What, because of his accent and the fact he has no sense of style? I know right? He's lived with the same dude for like, decades, but they aren't together. He doesn't strike me as being good at romance.”

He didn't strike Hanzo as the type either, but every moment of this job had become a whirlwind of second guesses. Maybe those long stares and drawl-drenched terms of endearment weren't just his imagination.

“If it helps, I bet you two would be cute together.”

“ _Hana._ ”

 

* * *

 

Days passed, Hanzo was gradually weaned off Hana’s help as she worked her shifts charring skewers and flatbread. Like so many things, practice turned into routine. The food felt second nature to him.

He still felt a level of disdain for Jesse McCree, yet he cursed himself for feeling anything at all.

 

* * *

 

A Friday night approached, and it was the first Friday in his career which Hanzo felt himself losing grip of his orders. Every ticket had at least one of his responsibilities on it, which would’ve been flattering if not for a reservation count twice of what a normal Friday was. He felt sweat on his brow from the stove tops and the pressure.

“Hanzo, you doin’ okay over there?” McCree asked with a fistful of tickets in his hands. Hanzo had no time to respond and only shook his head from side to side. His ponytail felt looser from the extra huste. “Damn, we're goin’ through more abalone than a drunk goin' through brews!”

“It seems to be very popular tonight, for some reason,” he said, orchestrating each leaf and peachy sliver of shellfish with agonizing urgency. Couldn't sacrifice quality for expediency. Although maybe he could sacrifice sanity for both.

“Ah hell, why though?”

“Don't you old men go on instagram, ever?” Hana said while pulling a long rectangular plate to rest two wooden skewers of pork belly on. “The pastry chef from Trestle took pictures of the panna cotta and Lúcio’s new cheesecake, it went super viral!” Jesse strung together an impressive chain of profanity. Hanzo's age showed; he never had to handle a busy night because of one picture on social media.

“Want me to start cuttin’ out a few more, Han?” Han? Since when was he given a pet name by this handsome cretin?

“I would offer, but I have three steaks on the next ticket,” Fareeha said, not taking her eyes off the slabs of beautifully marbled meat in front of her.

“I can do it myself, I think.” Hanzo unsheathed his sharpest slicing knife and peered up, seeing McCree’s hands holding a bag of shells in the pass. He nodded “yes,” hoping it translated to a quick “thank you,” and buckled down on shucking as quickly as possible.

He had a three minute window until his next ticket. He didn’t need help because he knew he could get it done in time.

By the first shell, he had three orders. Hanzo kept his focus as well as he could, with the clamoring of Fareeha’s pans onto the stove, into the pile of used ones Jamie would be picking up to wash. Was she this terrifying on purpose? No, he’d get over it, he thought as he finished the second shell. Six and a half orders.    

Hanzo figured by the third shell he picked up his nerves would be feeding him new things to notice. There was a steady thumping noise in the background. Was Lúcio listening to music while working? Did he have that little to do during service? He envied bakers for having everything done in advance. Damn, it was a smaller portion. Nine orders total. He maybe needed three more to survive the night. It would be easy.

That was all fine in theory, until his knife slipped on the fourth abalone and Hanzo felt his blade slice straight down the first two digits of his middle finger. He screamed in Japanese words that would make his boss blush.

“Shit, you okay?” McCree asked immediately. It took most of Hanzo's being to suppress an outcry of pain and disappointment in himself. He was better than hastily cutting himself, or so he thought. No, he thought, who was he trying to fool, sushi didn't need expediency, and sushi didn’t need to bend time because of the whim of instagram.

Taking a closer look, Hanzo unfurled his right hand from the incision, the wrinkles in his palm creating little rivers of blood in his hand. The cut wasn't the deepest he’d had but the sting of his tyro caused it to feel worse. He felt a gentle tap on his shoulder, Lena’s delicate hand, motioning to the other side of their island where McCree was fumbling with opening their first aid box. He shuffled past her to the anxious chef trying to find the correct tools in a jumble of unworn gauze. The man, without hesitation, yanked him forward by the wrist, his gaze possessed by Hanzo’s injury. God, his hands were just so _warm_ , god, so were his cheeks at this point.

“Settle down, hold still, okay?” Hanzo wanted to pull his hand far away, no matter how much skin he'd tear and blood he'd drip across McCree’s tanned hands. The chef glazed peroxide with a small cotton ball over his wound. He jumped, less from pain and more from touch, the surprising gentleness he put into tending his careless cut on a busy Friday night. “Shit, okay, ain't too deep. You don't need stitches.” He wrapped the incision with a bandage, careful to not press too hard. Hanzo looked to his side to watch Hana juggle flatbreads while finishing his work. He had to thank her later (and thank her for being an ample distraction from being smitten over Chef McCree doting on his injury.) His chef rolled a finger cot quickly over it, tight enough to feel the throbbing of his wound ring in his ears. Maybe that was something else. “Good as new!” McCree said.

“The, uh, tickets,” Hanzo stuttered, still taking in the chef's mansuetude and beaming smile while the kitchen still furiously worked behind them.

“Hell, they can wait, if it’s that bad I'll jump on and Ana can give ‘em a free glass of cheap wine. Get some water. Take a breather.”

Hanzo sat on a turned-over milk crate in the locker hallway, a quart container of ice water in his pristine hand, and tried (and failed) to expel that lingering feeling on his hand.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, Han, real quick before you go!” McCree said, haphazardly waving a pile of papers and a towel in his hand. Hanzo was zipping up his jacket with his right hand and fumbling in his pocket for his bus pass, curious to why McCree would need him.

“We’re windin’ down the early fall menu and goin’ into late fall, early winter soon, and I wanted to see if you could put somethin’ on the new menu!”

“I am not sure I have the experience to be contributing in such a way.” In his mind, Hanzo spoke the truth. He was employed for barely over two weeks and lacked creativity. He colored in the lines and sure as hell never had the opportunities to not do so in Japan. Cooks who spilled blood two weeks into the job didn't get to have special privileges like having someone entertain their ideas.

“Ain’t gonna hurt you to try! Fareeha’s tried some things and we all pitch in to fix it up. You can use anythin’ we got our I can do some special orderin’. Sleep on it, if you want.” He slipped back into the office with a wink, Hanzo responded less with a wink but with a twitch.

Later that night Hanzo immured himself in his room, sat cross-legged on his bed and stared blankly into the plethora of pictures taken by guests on Gibraltar’s review pages and the empty pages of his notebook. He didn’t understand why he would ask his staff for ideas. To humor them or a short-term confidence boost? Out of laziness? Hanzo didn’t put either past the chef, yet to keep to his own vows to improve he tried to jot down a few ideas.

He thought of his brother, the beacon of creativity between them.

“ _Remember that time we took Father’s Lambo to Fukuoka? Man, I’m still mad that cute girl in Canal City didn’t give me her number, but I’d kill to eat that crab rice from Saga again. Don’t give me that look, you know me well enough by now!”_

Hanzo thought of that small escape they had from their dangerous family, the winding roads through the rural forests and over bridges at high speed in the stolen sports car. They always went on those trips to lose themselves in cities that had no grasp on who they were. Genji would go for the skirt-chasing and bar food while Hanzo just appreciated the peace and quiet.

He still remembered how the crab rice tasted, in a small family restaurant in the mundane island town, with shredded bits and whole claws. It was so plain but melted in their mouths and reminded them of the home they wished they had.

By the end of the night he sketched dozens of plates, bowls, and saucers of something maybe his brother would have been proud of. He fell asleep sitting up against the wall and dreamed of the smell of the ocean and Genji’s old green apple hair color.

 

* * *

 

The next day Hanzo was ready to work before eleven, with his notebook of drawings and guesstimates of recipes, and a small shopping bag with vinegar and bitter melons, the kind that looked like cucumbers but felt like mugwort. The only presence in the kitchen was the hum of refrigerators. Lost in his ideas, he didn't hear Lena sneak next to him until she asked “What are you working on so early, love?” He jumped, almost out of his skin, and almost tossed his chef’s knife across the room. “Ooh, sorry, didn’t mean to scare you!”

“It is alright, I was just overly concentrated in my dish.” He continued to carefully crack into a large crab with his chef's knife, with ear-piercing shatters of its shell.

“Working on a special project?” she asked.

“The chef requested I try a dish for the new menu,” Hanzo replied while salvaging as much crab meat as he could.

“Ooh, Chef Jesse must really like your work so far! What's it going to be?”

“That will be a surprise until later,” he replied while deep in new thoughts.

“Can't wait! Mind if I sna a spot in here, turn on the radio, love?”

“As long as it is not too loud, yes.” With her usual bounciness Lena went back to her usual lair to bring her tools and and a small speaker to Hanzo's workspace. She bought a large lexand full of onions, carrots, and celery as well to start soup stock. She cut them into large chunks with softer, more precise cuts than he predicted. She quietly hummed to her music, boisterous female vocals in a British accent as thick as her own. He steadily sliced thin petals of breakfast radish with a mandolin the way he pictured someone playing a _koto_ with a gentle intensity. Hanzo stopped his hand from slicing the tip of his fingers off around the radish’s stump, while his mind wandered to thoughts of hearing the piercing strings and _shamisen_ strums on one of his sightseeing trips through Kyoto with his problem child of a brother.

“Do you like it here, so far?” Hanzo snapped out of his daydream with Lena’s question.

“It is quite a departure from what I am used to, but yes, I like it a lot”

“Thank goodness! It's hard to tell with you, you know? You've got that,” Lena turned to him, scrunching her brow and nose into a cartoonish scowl before falling to pieces in laughter, “Serious face all the time!”

“Is that what I look like?”

“Of course not, love! I'm just having a go at you!”

“Is Man Bun being all ‘No Fun Allowed’ again?” Hana asked from the other side of the pass, peering in with curiosity, pink knife roll slung around her chest.

“No, no, he’s just trying to finish a dish for Chef! Seems alright to be serious!” Lena reassured.

“That’s his secret, Lena,” Hana said with a baiting smirk. “He’s _always_ serious.” Lena snorted and went back to her mounds of mirepoix. Hana looked down at Hanzo’s work. “Hope you’re done with that soon. Chef Jesse got here the same time as Lu and I and he’s got his hangry face on.”

“As a matter of fact, I just need to arrange it,” Hanzo replied, for once returning one of Hana’s needling grins.

“How long have you been here?”

“Since ten thirty.”

“You _tryhard._ ”

Hana wrangled Lúcio, still nursing a coffee, and McCree, barely composed and scruffy as ever, to the kitchen. Fareeha came in her own volition, saying “If it had Hana shouting, it must be worthwhile.” Every hair on Hanzo’s body felt as if it was standing upright, even if his taste testers were half asleep. He walked with a bowl cradled in his hands to the other side of the pass, and placed it in front of his coworkers with a pile of spoons.

The small bowl had mounds of fluffy white rice, crab meat and claws just like on his getaway years past, with small mounds of shaved pink radishes and green arches. It wasn’t particularly elevated, but it was as the chef would say, “his heart on a plate,” even if it was more like the shattered and trampled pieces of it.

“Whaaaaat is this!” Hana exclaimed. “It looks so cool with the pincers!”

“ _Kanimeshi_. Crab rice with avocado, bitter melon, and pickled radish.”

They all reached for forks, but McCree took the first bite, taking bits of each component with it. Hana unceremoniously took a large scoop, the fork scraping the bottom of the bowl, and made an astonished outcry.

“The avocado is at the bottom?!”

“It s an avocado egg custard, yes.”

“ _Chawanmushi_ ,” McCree added. Hanzo sensed he was trying to keep an objective face, but McCree’s eyes flashed with a spark like dynamite. The man wore his heart on his sleeve. Dear god, he _liked_ it.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had cooked avocado. I assumed it would brown with oxidation, but the color and taste is very nice,” Fareeha said, her lips dragging slowly across her spoon, completely cleaning it.  

“Omigod, Man Bun, you’re not allowed to say you can’t cook anymore, okay? This is amazing!” Hana said while greedily scraping the avocado Fareeha didn’t take off the bottom.

“The crab’s so tender and buttery! And the pickle is really nice!” Lena added. She seemed to bounce with every crunch into the melon.

“You gotta give me the ratios on that custard, okay? I want to compare this to my own brulée!” Lúcio said, waving to him for his attention before running to his station to check on his bread.

Delighted by the kudos of his peers, Hanzo felt himself smiling. Had he smiled in the years he spent hollowly working and surviving in Tokyo? Barely two weeks in and he felt like he already gained so much of the praise he craved.

His co-workers scatters back to their other projects, while McCree still stood near him with the same fire in his expression. Next thing he knew, McCree had wrapped his right arm around his shoulders in a forceful side hug. Hanzo made a strangled growl at the contact.

“It was amazin’! A little salty, a little buttery, sour, sweet, almost perfect! And to think you did all that in one day, with a damn cut.”

“Almost perfect?”

“I mean, maybe it’s jus’ personal opinion, but the melon could be a little thinner, like the radish. Otherwise, I was gonna ask you if you were comfortable with usin’ it.” Chef McCree asked for his dish the way one would ask a woman to dance, with bashful and giddy glances.

Hanzo prayed his own overflowing heartsease didn’t show on his face.

“It would be an honor.”

“Perfect! Now, you’re comin’ out to karaoke with us, after service, right?”

“...Come again?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Sorry for the hella delay! As anyone who works in in a kitchen can say the holidays can be hellish! However I got to polish this thanks to the week and half vacation I got from work.  
> -I forgot how much I like writing slice of life. This fic really scratches that itch. However, next chapter will have more conflict because, well, these two have very conflicting personalities. I also plan to use each chapter to flesh out each character besides the main pairing. Next one will have a lot of Lúcio and Ana. Chapter four will have a lot of Jesse and...well, can't say just yet.  
> -Kanakas is..well, balls. Nalgas. Cojones. You get it. And Wagon Wheels are like Moon Pies but a little better ;P  
> -Whitechapel is a real gin bar (that's London Underground themed to boot!) and Trestle is a real restaurant (pre fixe, cute little food.)  
> -A koto is a traditional Japanese instrument that's like a string instrument on its side. It's got a nice sound to it. Shamisen are similar to a sitar in structure but played with a paddle.  
> -Kanimeshi is a real dish, but a lot more simple than Hanzo's. It's usually just crab, rice, and seasonings. This one is more of a hybrid between kanimeshi, chawanmushi (savory egg custard,) and champloo, a kind of stir fry with bitter melon and spam that's popular in Okinawa. I knew about the first two but learned about the last from a book I got this year called Nanban by Tim Anderson that does a really god job explaining Japanese cuisine beyond sushi and ramen, and sheds light on a lot of cool regional dishes like yaki-curry, my personal new favorite :O  
> -I felt putting lyrics into it would be odd but I pictured Lena listening to "Spectrum" by Florence and the Machine. It seems like her kind of music.


	3. Beer, Mochi, and Humility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hanzo gets dragged to karaoke night, dragged to the pastry station, and dragged through the mud by McCree

“I have a question.”

“What’s that, Man Bun?”

“How exactly did you get into this establishment?”

Hanzo, McCree, his fellow cooks (save for Fareeha, who had a date night planned with her girlfriend) and the dishwashers were crammed into the small room with leather couches and a coffee table full of gaudy sushi rolls, potstickers, and pitchers of Japanese beer and soju. He hadn’t been to karaoke since Genji was alive, not that he ever sang (that he remembered.)

“Fake ID, duh!” The rest of the team laughed as he pinched the dimpled bridge of his nose with concern.

“Hot damn, nothin’ goes down smoother on a Saturday night!” McCree exclaimed while slamming his shot glass on the table and reaching for a piece of sushi that seemed more bagel than Japanese food.

Something Hanzo never got to notice before was the way his co-workers dressed off the line. Hana was expected, with a tomboyish look of jeans and a hoodie, with a tee underneath making references to what he guessed was one of her online games. Lúcio, from the little he knew, dressed the way a sports fanatic would, baggy and covered in mesh and Brazilian sports logos. The dishwashers looked like disasters, as if they drunkenly stumbled through a resale shop. Mister Rutledge was going more for comfort than style, with multiple coats and tattered sweatshorts, while his counterpart compensated for having a name like “Jamie” with ripped black jeans and a coat covered in patches, pins, and spiky metal studs.

Chef McCree however, while nothing else about him was extraordinary, wore a very tight maroon shirt. The little it left to Hanzo’s imagination almost made up for the insanely tacky “BAMF” belt buckle around his waist.

“Careful, Man Bun might flip his shit at your Philly Roll,” Hana sneered.

“I think I will be alright,” he said, smugly looking at McCree stuffing his face, “even if it is disgusting.”

“Now there's the Hanzo we know and love!”

“You blokes haven't had weird until you've had kangaroo musubi,” Jamie chimed in, slurping loudly on a milk tea with boba pearls and three shots of vodka mixed in. “Roadie used to make them while out in the NT, never wanna look at another slab of ‘roo meat again.”

“That doesn’t sound all that bad,” Hana said while fidgeting with the control panel by the karaoke monitor. “Sounds like it would just be _char siu_ on rice.”

“Hear that? Sheila thinks he knows how to season food!”

Hana, after beating the glitchy terminal into submission, insisted on Lúcio joining her for a pop song with lots of heavy beats in the background, although for most of it the baker stood behind her making various gang signs and chugging his cheap beer.

_“A diva is the female version of a hustler, of a of a hustler,”_

McCree couldn’t stop laughing at the faux toughness of their juniors; at one point he even covered his face with his hat to muffle himself. Jamie belted “Highway to Hell” in his screeching voice while Rutledge played air guitar on the sofa. Lena tried to rouse everyone from their seats for a round of “Bohemian Rhapsody” but Hanzo politely refused.

“You ain’t gonna sing tonight?” McCree asked him after swinging an arm around his shoulder, just like when he showered Hanzo in praise before, his breath heavy with liquor and the distance between them warm and brain-wracking.

“I would rather watch, for now.”

“Aw, that’s a damn shame, bet it would sound nice,” he said, sliding his arm off Hanzo (it lingered, he was sure of it, it wasn’t the soju and wishful thinking.) “Maybe next time.”

Hanzo sank into the leather sofa while he watched his odd band of co-workers galavant and sing off-tune in a haze of disco lights and flashing words on a blue screen.

He could have sworn McCree was looking straight into his eyes towards the end of the lyrics.

“ _So you think you can love me and leave me to die? Oh baby, can’t do this to me baby,”_

Crimson flushed his face as he realized he just had to get out, just had to get right out of there, immediately.

* * *

 

Hanzo stumbled up the stairs to his apartment and dropped his keys twice before getting through the door. He bee-lined straight for his room, stripped himself of his heavy jacket and jeans, and threw himself on the bed, relishing the cool feeling of the cotton sheets below him. When was the last time he was able to actually enjoy himself a little? Maybe he was too cruel to refer to his co-workers as culinary outcasts in his mind; maybe he was blind and shallow and his brother was right all along. What was the point of being good at your craft if there wasn't a fleeting moment of joy?

Lord, watching his stooge of a chef sing was actually sort of charming. He thought of those big tanned hands running up and down his body, worshipping his tattooed muscle, groping his backside, fondling him til Hanzo practically _begged_ him for something more. That thick, smoky voice, peppered with constant terms of endearment, was talking him through every vivid kiss, grope, _thrust,_ like a movie he couldn't peel his eyes from. As professional as he tried to be, that lot of his mind that grew up with cloying Valentine’s Day confessions and covert trips to hide away at love hotels conjured up countless visions of what he could have, what _Chef Jesse_ could have if he wanted. But it was more than his touch and hungry gaze he craved, he thought. He felt ashamed, like a career woman fawning over her supervisor, because of how the slightest compliment left him flustered and wanting.

Those quick praises and playful expressions made the strain in his briefs more noticeable. Hanzo's mind was screaming at how he was at the point of no return, how he'd never be able to look at McCree the same way, but the raw need pulsing through him and his clinging tipsy mindset drowned those thoughts away.

He knew he'd regret this small indulgence but his brain couldn’t focus on anything other than his growing need for Jesse McCree.

* * *

 

Hanzo arrived to work the following Tuesday ten minutes late.

It wasn't just the shame of spending forty eight hours spent coveting his chef’s body and the usual following shame, but was minutes spent fidgeting in the mirror with his reopened earholes.

(He stood in front of the combination mirror and sliding closet door focusing intently on the small plain stud pinched between his fingers. He guided it into the lobe that hadn’t had metal in it since he was maybe twenty-six, or maybe longer, the disorienting pain reminded him. After the second stud was put back in and a few pills went down his gullet Hanzo looked at himself in the mirror, satisfied to have a part of himself back the nicer sushi establishments forced him to hide. If it wasn’t for the searing pain that forced him to reach for the aspirin again, getting him out the door late, he even considered putting the piercing in the bridge of his nose back.)

He contacted McCree right away with no reply, unsurprisingly, but brushed it off.

Ten minutes was negotiable time, Hanzo assumed. Japanese kitchens would have shamed him, berated him, yet here he might have been the only cook never late. He arrived at Gibraltar, unperturbed, and readied himself for business as usual. He heard roaring laughter from the office, and turned while buttoning his shirt up to an unfamiliar sight.

Ana, perched in her chair with her marbled braid poking out of her headscarf, covered her smile from the ridiculously large man kneeling next to her. Her hand was dwarfed by his that encapsulated it, with a distinct shimmering patch. Was that a kiss mark? His expression must’ve reflected his intrusive observations as Ana looked up from her strange beau and smiled as warmly as the Turkish coffee she brought from home every day. With a gentle wave she said “Hanzo, dearie, we won’t bite! Come here for a moment!” He set his knife roll back in his locker and cautiously approached the twosome. “This is one of our beer purveyors and one of my dearest friends, Reinhardt. He runs Balderich Brewery out in Napa.” He flashed a smile endearing, elderly, and unfitting or his terrifying physique.

The gargantuan man stood, and Hanzo could visibly see every muscle fiber flex for the simple yet crushing handshake he was given. How was it possible a man could dwarf Mr. Rutledge this much? Had he just not met enough Westerners?

“Reinhardt, don’t scare the man too much. He’s from Japan; he might not be so used to your warm welcomes.”

“My boy, how long have you been in America? Do you enjoy the feinschmecker you are a part of now?” Hanzo glanced to Ana for help. She mouthed “fine dining,” the saint.

“My experience here has been nothing short of amazing,” he said, feeling his lips curl up with satisfaction. This might have been the first time he meant what he said about a restaurant he worked for.

“He’s taken quite a shining to the place. Jesse even has one of his dishes on the menu at the moment.” Ana looked at Hanzo with a raised eyebrow full of motherly knowledge _,_ as if she was silently asking _What else have you taken a shining to, my dear?_

“ _Wunderbar_ ! Here, young man, take one of these!” Reinhardt reached into his side pocket and pulled out a green aluminium can adorned with golden knightly armor and calligraphy.  “ _Hefeweizen_ , one of our best sellers!”

“Why did you have this in your pocket?”

“Hanzo, if you don’t mind, we have more business to discuss, can you close the door on your way out?” Ana asked. He wasn’t sure they were doing any business when he first saw them, but obliged with the brew in his hand.

Leaving the office and scurrying through the prep area, he saw Fareeha leaving their walk-in fridge balancing three boxes and a crate of produce in her hands. They made eye contact. How was she already this irritable looking?

“I see you've met my mother's suitor,” she said flatly while Lena cut between them and grabbed the top crate of lemons with a “Thanks love!”

“Is he not to your liking? Or are you just very overprotective of your mother?” He followed her to the main line where she plopped the crates onto her station.

“My mother can handle herself, and has dealt with men more sleazy than Reinhardt. But, I can always be cautious.” Fareeha used her pairing knife to slice through the packing tape like an assassin. Hanzo knew days within meeting her she could rival him in unapproachable withdrawal sometimes. This hair trigger of her mother, it set her off with the same shoulder-rolling, teeth-clenching reaction he had when someone brought up his brother.

“He seems kind. This city brings kindness out of everyone, so it seems.”

Fareeha scoffed, reaching into the first torn open box and pulled out a whole chicken, and destructively used one of her larger knives to butcher it . “That's because you've only worked here. My mother wouldn't stand for having your typical egomaniacal cooks and servers represent her. If you left Gibraltar, you would find kitchens as cold as anywhere else.”

“Have you worked anywhere else?”

“Yes, briefly. Old family friends. Men who are half the chef I’ll become.” She glanced at Hanzo, who in empathetic fondness, was watching her break down chickens with his head rested in his hands and elbows on the cutting board. “Speaking of which, there's a lot to do today. Less talking, more chopping!”

In jest, Hanzo clicked his heels together and gave a foolish salute. “Yes chef!”

* * *

 

“And so, like, I was arguing with the goalie for like five minutes about it, and he was like, ‘Naww bruh, you were still out of the field so the goal doesn’t count,’ but I was like, ‘Bruh please our field is set up by water bottles and bags of Takis, you need to put your glasses on!’ Hey, is this the right texture?”

Hanzo peered over into Lúcio’s pot and nodded. He reluctantly agreed to teach the pastry chef how to make mochi for one of his new dish ideas, and while half of his time so far was spent trying to balance the texture with whatever he threw in to make them gingerbread mochi, the other half was spent deciphering Lúcio’s shared stories of clubbing and playing sports. It was hard to avoid conversation with the young man, without the crepitation of the long range of burners but a single electric burner and quiet ovens. “You never told me what you thought of my dish idea anyway!”

Hanzo, still stuck on translating “Takis,” focused on the question. “The chocolate namelaka will combine well with the spices, like chai tea, but it lacks textural contrast.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I got a few tuiles and crumbles to try. Good eye though, man!”

Hanzo scooped potato starch from a small pile on the wooden workbench and powdered his hands like a fighter. He overturned the mochi onto the snowy surface and began kneading it into a tight ball.

The music was something he was still getting used to, since it was a large departure from the guitar, chiptune, and bubbly music Hana and Lena normally played. Hanzo never listened to R&B much himself.

“ _She gon’ give it up ‘cause she know I might like it_ ”

With his recent thoughts, he avoided it like wildfire.

Lúcio stopped rattling on about his soccer games in Golden Gate park and concentrated on their kneading. “Man, you really know how to handle this stuff!”

“I have not made it often, but it takes a great deal of patience, I suppose.”

“Nah, man, one time I had Jesse try to help me roll some mini baguettes for this _bahn mi_ special in the summer, and man, he treats everything like he’s trying to kill it! I was trying to explain to him, you gotta treat the dough right,” he said, making one large outstretching motion into his mochi ball. “You gotta massage it like the dough is your girl, and you gotta treat your girl _right_!”

“ _Baby girl, you know what I like, baby you know just what I like_ ”

Hanzo reapplied starch to his hands. It was strange to him to see a _wagashi_ so syrupy and spiced like the strange one Lúcio dreamed up, full of molasses and speckled with nutmeg and cinnamon. It still had the translucency of most mochi, and looked almost like tanned skin in his palms.

_“Mix it up, pour it up,”_

Hanzo wondered if McCree’s skin was as dry and calloused as his overworked hands, or if had this powdery smoothness of the dough he was kneading.

_“Take it down slow”_

Face flushed and desperately searching for a distraction, Hanzo asked “What made you switch careers from health to cooking?”

Lúcio softly chuckled. “I know, right? It’s gotta be crazy to think someone would skip out on good money for this, but I just got...bored of it. You good with your family still?”

Hanzo rolled the mochi into thin logs. The mere mention of family was a tempting excuse to leave. “Not especially.”

“Oh, uh, sorry man. Well, okay so, my mom moved here from Brazil when she was young, like my age, and still pregnant. That woman worked two jobs to get food on the table! Now she only works one, but that’s because I help her out still. And when I was little she used to take a day off from work to make me a birthday cake.” With a bench scraper, he began cutting the dough to the rhythm of the music. “And when I was in middle school, I used to ask my mom why she didn’t just buy a cake from the grocery store, and she said ‘ _Meu amorzinho_ , so I can see your happy face!’ I dunno, maybe that sounds cheesy.”

“It sounds pleasant,” he said listlessly, shifting his mochi to Lúcio as he began cleaning his work area.

“Can I ask you something, Hanzo?”

He paused from his scrubbing and turned to the younger man.

“You got anyone that helps you become a better cook?”

_Well, brother? Anyone you could think of?_

“I'm not sure.”

* * *

 

November rolled through as quickly as the gusts of wind that tunnel through the alleyway. Hanzo found routine, shortcuts, time to breathe.

He was on good terms with everyone, so it seemed. He even had brief conversations with Mister Rutledge, or Mako. “You talk much less than Jamie, but who doesn't,” the burly man once mused after admitting he was fond of Hanzo's politeness. Lena invited him for jogs which he sometimes accepted, through the steep cliffs of Lands End or at Crissy Field when the dawn turned the Bridge a vibrant fiery red (it'd also be accompanied by a “So I heard you having a laugh with the servers now, right? Love, you need to tell me everything you can about Amelie!”) Reinhardt brought him a sample of dark ale on a trip to court Ana.

However, the relationship between him and McCree remained civil but tense, professional yet, as a man who could overanalyze anything, had an underlying tension he couldn't ignore anymore.

* * *

 

The second week of December, Hanzo arrived late again.

This time want because of self-hatred or fiddling with his piercings but a power outage (“Just wait until the rain comes in heavier,” Lúcio would say later, “One time the power went out during a catering gig we had, and we had to buy fifty bags of ice and we could only serve meat and cheese platters, by candlelight!”) His hands twitched through his little rituals; strands of hair fell from his usual knot, he fumbled with the zipper of his jacket and dropped his bus pass at least twice. Hanzo prayed McCree had received his multiple voicemails and texts, or he'd be drowning in the amount of work he needed to do, especially on a Saturday night.

He swung the back entrance door open like his life depended on it. It took two tries to open his combination lock for his tools. He left his dishwasher shirts collar snap unsnapped, which for the mundane life he led was a true sign of dishevelment. Slamming his locker shut he rushed to the kitchen and almost ran face first into the clipboard in front of McCree’s chest.

“Whoa, slow down!” McCree said with his usual carefree demeanor. “Don't wanna drop those knives of yours!”

“Do you have no sense of urgency? The power outage in my neighborhood has put me very behind on my work.”

“No it ain't,” he replied smugly, with his arms crossed. McCree was waiting for an audible question but Hanzo was too off-kilter to give anything but a cocked eyebrow. “Hana took care of your herbs and peppers, and I cut up all the grouper and cod you needed.”

Part of Hanzo wondered if he never replied to his messages to be coy and play with his emotions, rather than being forgetful.

“You are impossible to contact, you know that?” Hanzo said dryly. It seemed to only please McCree further.

* * *

 

With his alleviated workload and a large bowl of lamb stew Fareeha made for family meal, Hanzo fell back into his rhythm in dinner service.

“Two endive salads, followed by four lamb skewers, then a black cod and a ribeye!”

His _kanimeshi_ still sold steadily, the olive oil poached grouper was slowly becoming easier to handle. The cod was still tricky; sometimes on a rough night he couldn't guesstimate the heat of the pan for the perfectly seared skin.

“Two endive up, love!”

Hanzo had developed a lot of good coordination with his teammates, and even went as far to properly call them his teammates now. As soon as Lena finished her salads he locked eyes with Hana, who was already brushing harissa onto her lamb. He figured he should start his cod early, since he was still feeling jittery from his late start,  and leaned down to his fridge.

To his horror, the fish in his lowboy was butchered, in both senses. The filets were all different thicknesses by height, width and length _,somehow_ , torn at the sides, with bits of the skin and flesh flicked off. It was mockery, to Hanzo. An amateur he was but if there was one thing he could pride himself in, it was the ability to _fabricate any fish in the fucking ocean._ McCree looked down from the other side of the pass at him, like he wondered what was taking so long.

Hanzo’s blood was boiling like the surface of the sun.

“This cod looks horrible,” he said flatly.

“Yeah, sorry ‘bout that. Turns out we didn’t have much left, ‘cept for two runts, and we ain’t gettin’ in more til Tuesday.”

“ _You_ cut these?” He felt almost betrayed.

“Yeah, as fast as I could though. ‘Had to take care of some paperwork and menus for some charity dinners and I had to go put some change in my meter.”

“How can you think this is not a big deal?”

McCree blinked in surprise. “Huh?”

“We should not be serving this, if it was in poor quality.”

“I mean it ain’t prize-winnin’ fish but you’re gonna cover it up with the red peppers and th-”

“You think I can work with this? This goes against everything restaurants like this preach. I will not take your apathetic approach to this messy work, you _imbecile_!”

Instantly, Hanzo regretted lashing out and watched McCree’s face drop to hurt, then twist into a rage and frustration he never expected to see in him. In his other chefs, yes, weekly. In someone with such warmth and good intentions as McCree (good intentions he should have recognized by him doing Hanzo’s work for him in the first place, but no, it wasn’t good enough, for some idiotic reason,) it was sparse and terrifying.

The corner of his mind, lately quiet, that piece that whispered to him in Genji’s voice, was now screaming in full decibel. _You should know better, brother._

“Come around to my side” McCree said, low and commanding. Hanzo passed by Lena, who whispered with Hana and Fareeha about Hanzo’s chances of survival. As he stood in front of the taller man, he wondered the chances himself.

“Lemme see that apron of yours.”

Reluctantly, Hanzo untied and removed it, shoving it into McCree’s hand in a tousled ball. To his surprise McCree removed his personal apron, one with dozens of pockets and a grey thatching pattern, and put Hanzo’s on himself and walked where he once stood while berating him.

“What are you doing?” Hanzo asks warily.

“Well darlin’ it seems like you’ve got this all figured out, so I’m givin’ you a break from the line and you can expo. Seein’ as I’m a, what was it, ‘messy,’ ‘apathetic,’ an ‘imbecile,’ I bet you got this _all_ under control.”

“Wait, I-”

“Nope, you’re right. I ain’t some ‘Jiro Dreams of Sushi’ tight-ass so I ain’t worth the trouble. What ticket’s next, hoss?”

Hanzo knew neither of them would back down, out of imprudent pride. In concept, a ticket line wasn't hard to manage, but none of the restaurants he precisely worked at gave him the chance. He tried to stay optimistic. At least this punishment wasn’t as draconian as it could've been. Yet.

Like serendipitous clockwork, a new ticket rang in as soon as Hanzo finished tying the apron around his waist. Tearing it out of the machine, he studied it closely. No odd abbreviations. No unfamiliar words. No issues, fortunately. “Three pork belly skewers, one crab, one wagyu, one...cheese?”

“That one's for Lúcio. He's got his own machine though,” Hana said while brushing the small pork slabs in a thick amber glaze. McCree turned to her, although Hanzo couldn't see his expression. Hana rolled her eyes. “Don't drag me into this, we have people to feed.”

Another ticket was punched in. Hanzo read, placed it by the older ones, and did as much as he could to overly communicate. Hana helped with minor timing details, Lena did as much as she could to set the pace. Ticket after ticket he gained a little more confidence. He included the old orders, before his ridiculous outburst, into his thought process with ease. Maybe things would be alright.

Servers rotated through the double doors, all blurred faces in Hanzo’s mind, people he never had to be introduced to. They had question in their voices but still obliged to take the dishes out.

More tickets came in. Hanzo called them, his team responded back. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was still out of place. McCree still refused to give him a gander or any words more than exactly what he was cooking.

He didn’t expect any of the servers to return.

Satya was tall and slender; she was a mechanical engineering major with a tongue as sharp as a creative writing major. They exchanged small talk during family meal before, but weren’t especially close. She maintained eye contact as she dumped a full plate of steak into the trash. Fareeha was shouting at her and making vague threats while flinging her spatula in every direction for the waste of food but Hanzo was too busy wondering if it would be wise to start looking for cheap flights after his shift.

“This is the second table of mine that you have delivered the main course to, twice. Do you think this is a fun prank the two of you are pulling?” the server asked, gesturing to McCree and himself.

“I-”

“I cannot wait til I am finished with my doctorate and I never have to deal with you people ever again!”

Ana burst through the doors, bewildered to see a flustered Hanzo where her chef’s place was. “Jesse, what in the world is going on? Why are tables being brought their food again after dessert?” She looked at Hanzo, frustrated, with her hands clenched shut and turning the color of the black and blue pantsuits she normally wore. “Did he put you up to this? What did you do?”

“I was just trying to expedite orders, I apologi-”

“Then why did you go to tickets from hours ago?”

“I am not exactly sure, there has to be somewhere I read the wrong thing,”Hanzo trailed off, trying to figure out how he could have made an error. It was easy enough as reading slips of paper, wasn’t it?

“Love, just in case,” Lena chimed, “are you going from left to right, or right to left?”

Hanzo checked the timestamp at the bottom of where he began and cursed himself. Out of habit he went the Japanese direction instead of Western. All he needed to do was figure out where his mistake and the right orders meshed together. Panic possessed him. The screeching of the ticket machine broke his concentration. The tickets blended together in a sea of white and red letters he was drowning in. He slammed his fist against the rail and hung his head. Upon looking back up McCree stared back with an expression he never expected to see from such a charismatic man: none at all.

McCree swung back around the line, removing Hanzo’s apron and folding it in quick neat motions. He set it in the pass like a well-wrapped package. The irony of how they exchanged the apron was not lost on him.

“That’s what I thought.”

Hanzo returned to his workspace, his four burners and a cutting board scarred with heavy knife cuts and stained with past creations, his current personal hell. Ana, Fareeha, and Satya continued to quarrel as he took inventory of his perfectly lined up tools, his sheathed knife, and the beginnings of a prep list for Tuesday that McCree in his vexation had no business helping him with.

His hands wouldn't stop trembling.

* * *

 

Once dinner was over Hanzo cleaned without a word, despite Lena and Hana’s prodding. Fareeha, not one to gossip, gave him a concerned gaze much like those her mother would use. He changed clothes in record time and rolled his apron into a tight scroll. Reluctantly Hanzo opened the door to the office, which was fortunately empty with Ana still taking care of guests. He staggered to the messier side of the room and placed his apron onto it.

He heard the familiar heavy footsteps of the man who made him into a shining example of arrogance. “Hey, hold on, what’re you doin’?” McCree asked.

“I am returning this apron and I will be removing myself,” he replied, keeping his eyes focused through small window into the foggy night. He couldn’t turn; turning would mean facing _him_ in his stupidity, turning would _break_ him.

“Wait, huh?”

“I was insubordinate, I have learned my mistake, but I know that what I caused disrupted service and I will take my leave.” His hand lingered above the apron. He kept his head low.

“Nobody’s tryin’ to fire you, Han!”

“Chef McCree, pl-”

“Nope, stop, hold on.” McCree, with steady hands, forcibly turned Hanzo to bring them eye to eye. No one had ever made Hanzo feel so small, and his vicinity brought it to a terrifying physical level. “One, stop callin’ me Chef McCree. Just, Chef Jesse, or maybe jus’ Jesse. Jeez, we’re the same age, you don’t gotta treat me like some damn fossil like Pepin or somebody. Two, you ain’t fired. You got hot-headed, I put you on the spot, hell, I think I owe you the apology. Really. I’m sorry. Lemme make it up to you.”

“Have you not embarrassed me enough today?”

“Hanzo,” McCree said beseeching as he reached down for one of Hanzo’s hands to take into both of his own. It felt so sincerely apologetic. The din of the dishwasher and cleaning music came to a halt and all Hanzo heard was his own heartbeat. “I’m sorry. I think you’ve come a long way already and I should’ve just took you aside to talk about it.”

“I...thank you.”

“I mean it, lemme take you out somewhere on Sunday.”

He blinked repeatedly. McCree let go of his hand and placed his own behind his back. Sunday was in less than a half-hour. “Take me...out?”

“No, uh, not like that. I meant, you haven’t done much to explore ‘round the city, have you?”

“I am afraid I have not, just the area close to my room and this restaurant.”

“Then it’s settled! We’ll go ‘round some good spots so you can feel a little more welcome. Sounds good?”

“I think so. Um,” Hanzo reached for his apron back and looked to McCree, beaming with his usual charm and eagerness. He mustered a half smile. “I still feel largely responsible. But thank you.”

Hanzo took the exit into the cramped alleyway. The only thing that got him home without fainting were the little crescent moon cuts he dug into his own palms with his fingernails.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Huzzah, I'm back from the dead! Thank you once again for your readership and comments (if you give 'em) and after this chapter it'll be a lot more relationship and plot-heavy now that he's secured a "date" with Jesse, mwahaha. These men are such awkward dorks with each other, it brings me such joy!  
> -Yes, I do imagine Hana singing Beyonce because of that one comic dub: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amEsnIzlPc4&feature=youtu.be  
> -The song Lucio is playing while working is"King of the Fall" by The Weeknd, probably my favorite song of his  
> -"Meu amorzinho" means "little love" in Portuguese. I used to work with a few Brazilians at the last restaurant I worked at and got some pointers for what was best to use  
> -Symmetra was a last minute pull but I wanted her in it for a short bit in chapter 6. I'm an overplanner for fics ;_;  
> -The gingerbread mochi dish is something I kinda attempted at home and succeeded to an extent. I wanted to put ice cream on the inside but I didn't roll them tightly enough. I'm a lot better at it now and I got to make 200 for my current job!  
> -The grouper dish is pulled from a recent Top Chef episode (if you aren't rooting for Shirley or Sheldon WHY ARE YOU EVE HERE) and the cod is another dish I pulled from Manresa  
> -Uhhh if you want a good mochi recipe let me know an I can give it out because it's really easy and fun and good if you're a broke college student hahaha


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